JERUSALEM, February 10 /TASS/. US court marshals have questioned Russian national Alexei Burkov who was detained in Israel without the presence of Russian diplomats.
"American court marshals questioned a Russian national in the territory of the Jewish state in the first days after the arrest without the presence of Russian consular workers," Burkov’s assigned lawyer Mikhail Ironi told TASS outside Jerusalem’s Magistrate Court, which held a hearing into Burkov’s case on Wednesday.
"I would like to know who gave permission to US marshals [court bailiffs] to question a Russian national in the Israeli territory and why they did not summon a Russian consul," Ironi said.
"They understood he [Burkov] was weak in those first days and did not quite understand where he was when the U.S. marshals who were already there pressed on him," the lawyer went on to say.
"The Jerusalem District Court is expected to receive an official extradition request [filed by prosecutors] on February 18," Ironi said. According to him, the United States had sent the materials for Burkov’s extradition to Israel. On Wednesday, the prosecutors submitted them to a judge at Jerusalem’s Magistrate Court, which is considering the case behind the closed doors.
"Hopefully, we will be able to talk about the case itself rather than procedural matters when it is handed over to the Jerusalem District Court," Ironi said.
Ruslan Kandaurov, the consular section chief of the Russian embassy in Jerusalem, told TASS that Israeli law enforcers had detained Burkov at passport control when he was trying to leave Israel on December 13, 2015.
"According to the consular section of the Russian embassy in Israel, [the man] was detained at the request of the US competent authorities," the diplomat said.
"One of the accusations may be linked to a hacker attack on computer networks," Kandaurov said.
"We are going to see the first evidence used in the case on February 18 when the official extradition request is received," Burkov’s lawyer told TASS. Ironi hopes the court will lift a ban on publishing the materials of the case as soon as it receives them.
"I hope it will be possible to openly speak about the case itself, apart from the procedural matters, when it is passed on to the district court," Ironi said.